Thank you, Gmail

Whenever I sign on to Gmail and look at my contact list for people to gchat with (it's not IM, it's gchat. Amazing job, Google branding team!), there's one name at the bottom that always pulls my heart strings: Rosc W. There's a little grey 'x' by his name, but then again, since I'm invisible, there's always an 'x' next to mine, too. Even though the last time we gchatted was more than a year ago, Gmail's memory, scary-elephantine in its capacity, remembers that R and I chatted. Even though it's irrational, I like to think that Gmail knows how important R was to me, and that's why he is always on my gchat short list. Always there, at the bottom.

I think it's R's little private joke on the big corporation; like he went in the back way and permanently programmed gchat to always include him on my list, thereby reminding me via google that he'll always be there for me, just a memory (or soul [g]chat) away.

Way I Am

by: Ingrid Michaelson. Listen Here.  (But don't watch the movie.)

Real Words                                                                    My Words
If you were falling, then I would catch you                 If you were falling, then I would catch you 
                                                                                         with open arms


You need a light, I'd find a match.                                 You need a light, I'd find a match
                                                                                            (or flashlight) 


Cause I love the way you say good morning.                  Cause I love the way you say good morning.


And you take me the way I am.                                       And you take me the way I am.


If you are chilly, here take my sweater.                           If you are chilly, here take my sweater.
                                                                                            sorry it's so small
 
Your head is aching, I'll make it better.                           Your feet are aching, I'll rub them better


Cause I love the way you call me baby.                            Cause I love the way you call me baby


And you take me the way I am.                                           And you love me the way I am.


                                                                                     
I'd buy you Rogaine when you start losing all your hair.    I'd do the laundry so you have clean  underwear 
                         
Sew on patches to all you tear.                                                  Match your work socks to show I care


                                                                              
Cause I love you more than I could ever promise.                  Cause I love you more than I could ever promise.


And you take me the way I am.                                                  And you take me the way I am.


You take me the way I am.                                                         You accept me as I am.


You take me the way I am.                                                          You take me the way I am.

Fed Up**

I'm fed up with you.
I'm fed up with you.
I'm not fed down, fed around, fed under
Not fed in, fed out, just about fed over
You starved love 'anywhere a cat can go'
All that's left is up so that's where I'll aim for
Got no emotion left to give to you
I'm just fed up. We're through.

You treat me like I'm nothin' when you know full well I'm not.
Don't even have the grace to give me notice of your thought
That maybe we're not good as two and single is your pref
I'm shouting via text to you and you pretend you're deaf 

That's why:

I'm fed up with you.
I'm fed up with you

I'm not fed down, fed around, fed under
Not fed in, fed out, just about fed over
You starved love 'anywhere a cat can go'
All that's left is up so that's where I'll aim for
Got no emotion left to give to you
I'm just fed up. We're through.

You never call me when you say you will and that's not cool 
Then give me lame excuses like you think that I'm a fool
I tried to make excuses and I told myself 'it's fine'
I truly can't believe I ever wanted you as mine.

I passed initial numbness and moved on to Angry Girl
I'm out of softish objects that it's safe for me to hurl
I skipped right past resigned and now I'm at this new heart stage:
'The lameness that you are should incite a public outrage.'

And so:

I'm fed up with you.
I'm fed up with you
I'm not fed down, fed around, fed under
Not fed in, fed out, just about fed over
You starved love 'anywhere a cat can go'
All that's left is up so that's where I'll aim for
Got no emotion left to give to you
I'm just fed up. We're through.




**All characters in this work of fiction are purely fictional. Any references to real people, events, or places is incidental and should not be construed as anything else. Meaning, I did not write this about me. Or about you. It's what my mom would call a high school poem.

all in a word

Sometimes, as I've discussed previously, one word can bring an overwhelming image to your mind. Sometimes it's simple, like "sun" or "square" or "blue." Other times it's more complex, taking more words to bring any image at all.

One such word - the kind that requires no explanation: unrequited.

I can't decide if I'm really glad that there's one word that describes so utterly perfectly the stress, angst, sorrow, despair, and loneliness of the condition of being on the giving side; OR if I just want to cry because the need for the word exists at all. (How depressing, to have "unrequited" as a label for your affection!)

Unrequited, you're a slave driver of the giver of affection and the bane of the recipient of your minion's labor. You choose to exert no control and continue to attract participants like moths to a flame. Unrequited, you're no fun for either person. You should always be the first to leave a party, with dignity and poise, but instead you're last. You're clingy and maybe even a bit stalkerish. No good.

Wish I could find a requited partner for you - so you could fit together like puzzle piece sentinels of love. Then maybe instead of 'unrequited' you could be relabeled "happily-ever-after."

Cats

Hekter T. Phoodle
(or, a Cat Resume)

Employment:
Laze-About, Principal Director: birth-present. Job duties include yawning, stretching, occasionally purring, and generally burning minimal calories.
Picky-Picky Cat Food, Nose-Upturner: since memory began-present.
Hello, Kitty! (American Realist) Very Cute Kitten: Age 0-6 months.*

Special Skills:
1. Dandy Danderifier: I spread dander and make people sneeze just by living! This is awesome. You should think so, too.
2. Regeneration: Hair is my specialty. I can shed enough hair in 1 month to clog any vacuum cleaner. Twice.
3. Baleful Hiss: I practice at least 3x daily. Key is to follow the hissing action with:
4. Inscrutable Stare: No blinking. Ever.
5. Expert Shredder: Anything you don't want sliced to ribbons with my genuine, non-imitation, did I mention, not fake, claws. The sharper the better!
6. Meowing: Scorning the stage rendition of my species.
7. Rhyming:  Meow::cow, bow, row, dhow, frau, how, Mau, now, ow, pow(wow), sow, tau, vow, wow.
8. Look, Ma! Kitty Litter: Use kitty litter as directed. Most of the time. 
 9. Purring. Perhaps I should have mentioned this first. I have received 3 Inappropriate Length Purr Awards.
10. Hunting. Self-explanatory in urban or non-urban environments. No further explanation is given.



References:
1. Puss In Boots
2. Cat Lovers Anonymous (ask for V or K)
3. Fiendish Felines

here comes the rain again

falling on my head like a memory

We had a vacation of sorts: it was shorter than implied when I signed up for vacation days in June*, and longer than expected when the boss handed out updated scheduling info in mid-August. In summary, after three and a half weeks with nary a raindrop in the waking hours, here comes the rain again. It started yesterday and continued today and will probably continue until...well...June of 2012. Already I miss the sunshine.

In just a few weeks, the memory of sunshine and warmth will become a near figment of my imagination. I will wonder if natural vitamin D and UV ray gathering is something only in movies or in archaic books. So I will hold on tight to the memory of no down blanket on the bed and the option of wearing socks everywhere and being even approaching too warm with all my might in the hopes that it will carry me over to next 'summer.'

*Actually, I signed up as soon as daylight savings took effect in 2010, but I knew that was a little early to begin to hope, but I just had to do it.

taking care of business, and working overtime

Yesterday I went grocery shopping at 3:30 pm.

"Why aren't you at work?" you might have asked me if you saw me in the store.

The answer is that I went on an airplane ride, and as the day was mostly gone anyway when my flight got in, I decided to take a much-needed break.

As I was in the store, something weird happened to me: I started to dance. A little soft shuffle as I went past the eggs. A crossover step past the ice cream. I was humming. It was weird. Which prompted the thought: "What's going on here?"

The answer was simple. I had worked a shorter day than usual. I actually had *energy*. And because I was at the store at 3:30, and not at work, and I hadn't even taken the day off, it felt marvelous.

It might have been partly the novelty of it, or the fact that I was 'playing hooky'. (Though if my boss had been in the same situation I'm sure she would have done the same thing...it's just that I checked my blackberry a few times, and she might have looked at it all night.)


So I took the break where I could find one, and I enjoyed every last shuffle-step egg-walk frozen food groove second of it. 

Buckets

Bucket List for Portland

Restaurant                      Destination                          Tourist Activity
Screen Door  11/12                Crater Lake                        Powell's City of Books 10/10
Veritable Quandary 1/12         Newport 3/13                     Pittock Mansion 2/18/13
Marco's Cafe  2/13                 Lava Lakes                         OMSI 7/11/12
Andina 10/12                          Seaside                               Jet-boat on the Willamette 9/24/12
Fat City  10/1                         Multnomah Falls                 Saturday Market 9/12
El Toro                                   Hawthorne                          Portland Swifts
Mother's  11/12                      Dam                                    Portland Art Museum 1/4/13
Salt and Straw 6/13                Smith Rock 7/13                International Test Garden (Roses) 9/12
Jake's                                      Woodburn Outlet 9/12        Chinese Garden 2/13
Nel Centro                               Astoria                               Japanese Garden 10/11
                                                                                          Zoo
                                                                                          The Grotto
                                                                                          

                        





Bucket List for Seattle: (will be edited as needed)
Restaurant                      Around Town                                  Event or Day/Road Trip 
Anthony's 8/11                  Paddleboating on Greenlake 8/11       Gasworks Park     7/12
Molly Moon's 7/11           Golden Gardens  3/11                         Dan's Broiler 7/12          
Cafe Presse 9/11              Swimming in Greenlake                       Bremerton 3/12                                  Burgermaster 7/11            Hockey game                                     Vashon 8/11
Dan's Broiler 7/12            Uwajimaya (again) 2/13                     Clipper trip to Victoria
Jade Garden                      record at EMP                                   San Juan Islands 5/19/12
Etta's 3/11                         Elliott Bay Books 4/3/12                    Ellensburg Rodeo
Salumi 8/22/12                  Karaoke                                          King Tut Exhibit 8/23/12
Poppy 2/11                       Lake Chelan 3/11                             Puyallup Fair 9/11
Cafe Presse 9/11              All SPL locations                               Mariners game 6/12
Tin Table 4/3/12              Emerald Downs   7/14/12                   La  Conner 4/7/12
Molly Moon's 7/11           Fremont Troll   2/11                           Road trip to Whistler
Toulouse  1/21/11              Frye Museum  8/24/12                     Deception Pass 4/7/11
Mora's                              Space Needle 4/12                           Whale Watching Trip 5/19/12
10 Mercer                         Show at the Paramount                     Port Townsend 3/12
Five Spot 2/12                   Uncle Elizabeth's 3/31/11                 Olympic Peninsula (Port Angeles) 3/12                     Boeing Factory Tour                        Tulip Festival  4/7/11
Saltoro 10/11                     Seattle Jazz Vespers 10/11               Anacortes  4/7/11
Pink Door  4/6/12               Seattle Symphony                            Deception Pass 4/7/12  
13 Coins 4/27/12                Volunteer Park 7/12                        Gig Harbor 4/12
Serious Pie 7/10                  Smith Tower Chair 8/15/12             Bainbridge
Barking Frog                       Olym Sculpt Grdn 4/12                    Mt. Rainier Forest
                                            Bumbershoot                  
                                            Sounders game                            
                                            Dusty Strings    
                                          UW Arboretum 8/11 
                                                                                                 
                                           
                           

Items that caused me to make the Seattle list:
Pike Place Mkt * French Crepe Place * Wild Ginger * Lola's *  Dahlia Lounge * Green Leaf * Elephant & Castle * Snoqualmie Falls * Ballard Locks * SAM * Ipanema * Machiavelli * Argosy Cruise * Gorditos * Tilth * Tango *                          

San Francisco(ish) Bucket
Sausalito 5/6/12                               California Science Academy  12/11        SF Zoo
Union Square 12/4/11                      Ferry Building                                        Exploratorium
Golden Gate Bridge walk 5/6/12      SF Symphony 5/5/12                             Windiest Road 5/30/12
Lands End                                       Giants game   6/28/12                                Monterey Aquarium
Tcho Chocolate Tour
    

SF Items that caused me to make the SF iteration:
Amoeba  * whale-watching * Palace of Fine Arts * de Young * Legion of Honor * Napa * Pier 39 (don't forget elephant feet/ In n Out) * Ghirardelli Square * Alcatraz * Grace Church Cathedral * La Boulange * Stacks * Hayes Valley * Prospect


Bucket List for New York City
Guggenheim
Central Park
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Frick Collection
Statue of Liberty
Staten Island
Carnegie Deli
Museum of Natural History
Museum of Modern Art
Show on Broadway
Times Square


Bucket List for Chicago
Architecture Tour
Art Institute
Millennium Park
Wrigley Field
Museum of Science & Industry
Shedd Aquarium
Field Museum
Miracle Mile
Top of the Hancock Building


General Bucket List
Uffizi
British Museum
Michelangelo's David
Stonehenge
Brighton
Bath
Scottish moor

Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Ice Cream (Alphabet, Alliteration Style)

acerbic avocado angle
bucolic butter bites
cosmic caramel crash
dervish dandelion dangle
elusive effusive eggplant
frenetic finicky feeding *this is what it started with. It kind of went on a tangent from there...*
green grape gusto
hibernating horseradish hop
iridescent irresponsible icing
jicama juxtaposed jam
killer karma kumquat
linger longer lychee
moonpie melon madness
nefarious niggling nerfherder
opulent organic orange
pandering praline prickle
quizzical quirk quart
ruby radiant radish
stuffed strawberry scone
triumphant twitch toffee
unexceptional uphill upside-down-pineapple
vulnerable venerable vanilla
winged watermelon whale
yummy yellow-yam
Xanadu xanthum x-ray
zealous zinnia zest

Still Life of Fruit

Or, Summer in America (minus melons and berries*)

Courtesy of local farms, California, Australia, and Chile. And Bangladesh (if you count the glass).

*chances are I would have these, too, if I was buying groceries for more than one person, and/or had a larger appetite.

blink of an eye

Life can change in the blink of an eye. Think about all the things that happen in a blink:
1. a sneeze
2. light from a lightswitch
3. a beesting
4. accidents
5. reading words on the page to find out you have a horrible disease
6. realizing you're in love
7. a perfect baseball pitch
8. popping a balloon
9. burns (not sun)
10. recognizing an attractive person
11. getting your contact lens out of place
12. firing a sapphire bullet
13. cutting yourself
14. smelling fresh air
15. smiles (except slow ones)
16. turning off rap music
17. clicking to buy a plane ticket somewhere (to the ones I love, most preferably)
18. changing the channel on the tv
19. opening a new firefox tab
20. seeing "you've got mail"

just to name a few.

Sometimes blinks seem to last a lifetime, like slow motion bad movies. Sometimes blinks zip by. Some blinks you'll remember for the rest of your life, and some of those, you might never fully recover from. 

Blink. 

Blinkety blinkety blink blinky blinkini blinkykink blinky blink.

Stuffy-stuff-stuff

1. The days wherein having a convertible in Seattle is a good idea are probably < 30 in any given year.
2. If you're going to wear socks with your sandals, make them gold toe socks.
3. Needing a light jacket in August is weird,
4. Crabs are wonderful and various. And there are a lot of them in the Sound, judging by a 1/2 mile walk along the beach yesterday. (Of course, all the ones we saw were dead, but still.)
5. Being a good communicator is really hard. Communicating with known entities can still be hard...people change, and so your communication style has to adapt or die. This might sound gross, but someday I hope to perfect the cockroach communication style - it can survive anything, even nuclear war.
6. Cream is amazing.
7. I now know where the phrase "losing weight" comes from.
8. Strong cores are preferable to weak ones.
9. Laughing makes every day better.
10. Music can really change your mood. I was really tense at work for the last few days...on Tuesday, I was on my way home and heard a version of this song. If I hadn't heard it, and found it on the net, and played it nearly continuously, I would probably have gone crazy somewhere around Friday at 3 pm and maybe considered finding one of the windows that have the little circles on them that indicate you can smash them outward. I didn't know that before...that even though it doesn't look like the windows open at all, the ones with the circles have "one time opening" capabilities.

R&R...or Railroad Crossings

I miss the sound the train made at night when I was sitting on Emmy's porch, or even my own, for that matter. The long lonely whistle somehow managed to always seem forlorn-sounding...it was always saying, "I'm sad, come back" and never "I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm almost there, wait for me." There was always a sad ache in my heart and sometimes I got goosebumps even though it was warm outside.

But the sound still reminds me of home. Reminds me of warm summer twilights and violin lessons and trips to the city. Counting the cars with my sister on road trips. Drivers ed classes..."every 90 minutes, a train accident happens." Which is why I have one of these on my keychain.

But now the yellow, which, by the way, is public domain as the Feds own it, doesn't remind me of railroads and the dangers of failing to come to a halt when the clanging of the bells and the cherry cough drop semaphore warned me to.
Now, double R's remind me of:
RR: rest & recuperation
RR: for Rosc and Ridj: two men I love (though in very different ways) that I have grieved for losing them within the last year
RR: ready to rumble
RR: the noise that K-lo can't make with her tongue in Spanish, so she always looks for a synonym so she doesn't have to try. (Example: instead of carro, she says automobil)
RR: a good ranch name. It could be Double-R, Rocking Ridgepole, Rambling Ranchhouse, Ruminating Ram, Ridiculous Rhymes etc.

I'm at a railroad crossing in my life. The train is coming. Will I stop and wait and count the cars? Will I rush for the track and get held up and wait impatiently? Will I become the victim of a railroad crash because I tried to squeeze past? Will I squeeze past successfully and listen to the wail and say "can't catch me?" Time will only tell. Here's to hoping that RRs continue to mean good things in my life.